[HN Gopher] All You Zombies
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All You Zombies
Author : benbreen
Score : 99 points
Date : 2022-02-25 16:08 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| Lambdanaut wrote:
| I like the idea that we're all the same entity, experiencing
| itself backwards and forwards through time, eternally forgetting
| and re-remembering who we really are.
|
| That's a fun one.
|
| Maybe next time I'll be the individual reading this comment.
| mode80 wrote:
| I like the way you describe it. Thanks for reminding Us. ;)
| Lambdanaut wrote:
| One of me has to do it
|
| Thank you for participating.
| psyc wrote:
| "Today a young man on acid realized..."
| throwaway378037 wrote:
| I always loved Ram Dass' occasional light-hearted remarks about
| this concept. Sometimes he would address his audience and say
| something like "I mean come on, there's only three of us after
| all..."
| [deleted]
| nlh wrote:
| You sound like a proper Eggist ;)
|
| http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
| pixl97 wrote:
| The Egg- Kurzgesagt
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI
| jdlshore wrote:
| animated by Kurzgesagt, but written by Andy Weir (of "The
| Martian" fame)
| [deleted]
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Or perhaps even the same, singular electron:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe
|
| Probably not, but it's a fun idea
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There are similar time-loops and incestuous themes in this
| Heinlein novel
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_for_Love
|
| which is popular among poly people but is one of the very
| Heinlein books I didn't read when I was a kid, maybe because
| being the story of a 2000-year old man it's crazy long. (It
| doesn't help that Heinlein had serious health problems after he
| wrote "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and that everything he wrote
| after that had quality problems)
| miki_tyler wrote:
| > There are similar time-loops and incestuous themes in this
| Heinlein novel
|
| Let's not forget "The Door into Summer".
| hpcjoe wrote:
| I think 'To sail beyond the Sunset' was quite wild. Read that
| in college.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Even more so... Plus "Door into Summer" is unambiguously a
| good read.
|
| (Actually though I tell people who like Heinlein that Joe
| Haldeman set out to out-Heinlein Heinlein and was successful
| with "The Forever War" and "Worlds")
| is0tope wrote:
| I know this is a side note, but I had never heard of worlds
| and I quite liked "forever war". Is it worth reading?
| [deleted]
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think so. ;-)
|
| Just like "The Forever War" is a reply to "Starship
| Troopers", "Worlds" is a reply to "The Moon is a Harsh
| Mistress". I would put "Worlds" in a category like Pohl's
| "Gateway" (but not the sequels to Gateway) in that it
| reads more like literature than genre fiction.
|
| The copy of Worlds that I have has a false copyright date
| (I think 1954) and I was thinking "... they didn't have
| lasers in 1954" and "... they sure didn't have O'Neill
| colonies in 1954". I think the fake date was no accident
| but part of the homage.
|
| Personally I think you should beam yourself into the past
| and tell your former self to read Worlds... It's that
| good.
| [deleted]
| natechols wrote:
| I obviously need to read "Worlds", but one thing I've
| wondered for a long time is whether LeGuin's "The
| Dispossessed" was also partially written in response to
| "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"?
| ghaff wrote:
| It's been a long time since I've read either although
| Moon is my favorite Heinlein and The Dispossessed is my
| favorite LeGuin. But I never noticed any connection.
| ghaff wrote:
| I will have to take a look at Worlds. The Forever War is
| one of my favorites but I have never really cared for any
| other Haldeman--but haven't tried that.
| the_af wrote:
| > _Pohl 's "Gateway" (but not the sequels to Gateway)_
|
| Side note: am I the only one who _loved_ "Gateway", when
| the Heechee and their ships and artifacts were mysterious
| and almost unknowable -- the whole "we think ships of
| size 5 or 1 are dangerous. Also these colors are probably
| good, and we think these are bad" -- but was disappointed
| when the Heechee finally made their appearance and lost
| some of their mystery?
| gerikson wrote:
| I never read the sequels to Gateway and now I'm glad I
| didn't. Gateway is such a great novel, but it's
| unsurprising Pohl wanted to investigate more of the
| universe.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Gateway was wonderful. Skip the sequels.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| If we're doing recommendations, I'd say Double Star is
| Heinlein's best work of the 1950's, although it contains
| neither time travel nor implied incest.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| It's not quite that simple; after he had an operation things
| got much more coherent. Friday is arguably a return to form.
| The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is also worthwhile. The thing
| about his works after Moon, both with brain problems and
| repaired-brain is that he clearly decided he was done with
| avoiding explicit sex and that he would write about it the way
| he wanted to write about it.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The first few chapters of 'The Number of The Beast' are some
| of the most amazing chapters ever written but then the book
| degenerates into senselessness which is really too bad.
| carapace wrote:
| It's been a long time since I read it but I feel like that
| was part of the point, eh? Like the title points to the
| degeneration into senselessness as the strictures of space
| and time and literary form and convention dissolve...
| ghaff wrote:
| I actually really like Time Enough for Love (though not as much
| as Moon). That said, it's more a series of linked stories than
| a conventional novel. (And you should probably read the prequel
| short first.)
| oddeyed wrote:
| This sounds great, I will try and read it. I recently read a
| science-fiction novel with similarly strongly-consistent
| timelines which was very enjoyable (if a bit slow to start).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_Time_Travel
| hprotagonist wrote:
| samizdat:
| https://gist.github.com/defunkt/759182/ad44c6135d168ae54503a...
| softwarebeware wrote:
| The movie "Predestination" with Ethan Hawke is based on this
| story.
| [deleted]
| donatj wrote:
| Predestination was a trip, I recommend it for anyone looking
| for an interesting weird movie.
|
| I had no idea it was based on a Heinlein story.
| wedn3sday wrote:
| Azimov.
| stavros wrote:
| If you want to read the story:
|
| https://ipfs.eternum.io/ipfs/QmSiaEmhLvFdzzvkBmJKtRDmZRNDpD
| t...
| Jtsummers wrote:
| "-All You Zombies-" (the basis of _Predestination_ ) was
| written by Heinlein, it's the subject of the linked
| Wikipedia article.
| dcdc123 wrote:
| I didn't realize it either. As I was reading the wikipedia
| article I kept thinking this sounded familiar then started to
| remember bits of the movie.
| xutopia wrote:
| Heinlein's work is amazing. If you get a chance to read Stranger
| in a Strange Land I highly recommend it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Although, at least at one time, that was his book that was
| probably best known to a mainstream audience that was far from
| my favorite of his. But I guess it did plug into the attitudes
| of a certain time. There are probably a good half dozen of his
| books I prefer though.
| jadbox wrote:
| In my view, there is no 'going back' with time travel. Rather,
| you appear in realty A+B where A is a similar state of the world
| at that moment in time that now has B applied to it by having
| present self placed in it. This solves all paradoxes with time
| travel as you never change the past, but rather, you are
| creating/finding forks of reality that appear backwards/forwards
| in time. Each time you 'travel in time', you are mearly moving
| between possible states of the universe. In this lens, nothing
| you do in 'the past' when affect you in the present because
| you're never actually in the past, but rather a fork of that
| time/space with you in it. That's just how I've always imagined
| it.
| jessriedel wrote:
| > In my view, there is no 'going back' with time travel.
|
| There are many distinct models of time travel, some self-
| consistent and some not. You are describing one you like, but
| this does not tell us much about how time travel works in the
| actual universe, if it occurs at all.
| r00fus wrote:
| This would seem the most logical to me as well - time being
| viewed not as a line, but a plane (or even a 3d space), where
| attempts to alter "the past" put you in a distinct branch of
| the timeline (a different spacetime).
|
| Of course, this isn't as romantic or digestible as time-travel
| as envisioned in most fiction (BttF).
| state_less wrote:
| What about the future affecting the past? Rather than A+B,
| there is A. In this scenario, you don't go to the past, you
| were/are already there. In other words, there never was a past
| without you in it. You never could go back and kill your
| mother/father since it would break a causal loop. You may think
| you have the agency to do so, but try as you might, you
| won't/don't.
| justinpombrio wrote:
| What this means is that the universe is solving a fixpoint
| equation: find a history that is self-consistent. The
| question this raises is, which one does it pick? There are
| infinitely many to choose from, and no clear criteria that I
| know of. You can have a fixpoint where someone is their own
| parent, but what chose this fixpoint over any other? I don't
| mean "woah man, who get's to decide?", I mean "this
| description of physics is incomplete; to complete it you need
| to specify the method of selecting which fixpoint gets
| chosen".
| state_less wrote:
| I'm not sure how self consistent histories might be chosen.
| It seems like some futures should be more common based on
| our physical understanding. Maybe they are all there (many
| worlds) and we happen to find ourselves in the compatible
| (most common?) ones.
| ghaff wrote:
| Odd entry to hit the front page but when I was putting together a
| list of favorite shorts/novellas from a list of SF authors a
| while back, this was my Heinlein pick in spite of him having a
| lot of great ones. (As the article notes his older By His
| Bootstraps is pretty good too in a similar vein.)
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| Pretty sure the Wikipedia article is longer than the story
| itself, so just go read it :)
| YesThatTom2 wrote:
| Oooohhh! I thought you meant to song by The Hooters:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2LE0KpcP05I
| pugworthy wrote:
| Driveshaft's "You All Everybody" sort of fits the story, at
| least the song name.
| eddiecalzone wrote:
| Also "Now Everybody's Me" by Dead Milkmen.
|
| https://youtu.be/by970PgeHk8
| adamc wrote:
| He wrote a lot of stories I loved. And then, early 1970s or so
| onwards, everything he wrote was awful.
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